First UFC Forever Altered Combat Sports (Story from Yahoo! Sports)

On November 12, 1993, everything most Americans thought they knew about fighting was thrown out the window.

At the time, most people figured that the marquee heavyweight boxer, the imprisoned Mike Tyson, was the baddest man on the planet. But there were people with amateur wrestling backgrounds who thought otherwise, figuring that a wrestler could take a boxer off his feet and once he got him there, the boxer’s weapons were useless.

Bruce Lee movies and the TV show “Kung Fu” had another camp believing in the invincibility of board-breaking karate practitioners or people who used flashy kicks.

And some favored kickboxing, with more points of attack, as being a superior fighting form than boxing.

Jiu-jitsu was something advertised in the back of low-rent magazines, and most people, not knowing any better, considered it another form of karate or kung fu.

Basically, almost everyone was clueless.

Rorion Gracie, the son of Helio Gracie and nephew of Carlson Gracie, the stars of the brutal, no holds barred Vale Tudo competitions in Brazil, which had a heyday in the 1950s, had more than just a clue.

He wanted to bring the style of fighting that made his family famous in Brazil to North America. Gracie met Art Davie, a martial arts enthusiast, who pitched the concept to Bob Meyrowitz, who had made millions producing the King Biscuit Flower Hour radio show. Meyrowitz’s Semaphore Entertainment Group was on the ground floor in pay-per-view, usually promoting concerts.

The concept sounded intriguing. Gracie, Meyrowitz, and their associates came up with an eight-sided cage, the octagon, and billed their creation, the legalized street fight, as the Ultimate Fighting Championship.

Starting from scratch

That UFC was nothing like today’s marketing juggernaut. There was no such thing as a mixed martial artist. The term mixed martial arts wasn’t developed until many years later.

Campbell McLaren, who Meyrowitz put in charge of marketing the project, in no way believed this was the ground floor of a new sport. In fact, he told people, “The last thing we want is for this to be a sport.”

The first show was booked for McNichols Arena in Denver and the secret local promoter of the event was Zane Bresloff, who had to keep his name quiet for fear his regular bosses, the folks at the World Wrestling Federation, would find out about his involvement.

It was billed as anything-goes fighting, to the finish, banned in 49 states (it was actually not banned anywhere â?? that would come later). On the first show, there were no gloves worn, and everything was legal except biting, attacking the eyes and attacking the groin.

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The second show saw the rules modified somewhat: You could attack the groin.

It was billed as world champions from eight fighting sports, although credentials of fighters were often exaggerated and records, and even heights and weights were often outright made up. They would have a one-night tournament with the only way to win being via knockout, submission or a fighter’s corner throwing in the towel. On the eventual videotape release of the show months later, it was billed as the only way to win being knockout, submission, or death. While that may have helped sell tapes, in the long run, that type of promotion was Semaphore’s undoing.

The winner was to receive $50,000. The matches had unlimited five-minutes rounds and no judges. None of the fights went five minutes, as it turned out, and most of the participants didn’t have a clue what they were getting into.

The lone exception was Rorion’s younger brother, Royce Gracie, who became the UFC’s first superstar. Studying under his father from childhood, in many ways the original UFC was designed by Rorion, although his partners weren’t fully aware of it, to be an infomercial for Gracie Jiu-Jitsu.

Rorion picked the competitors. He avoided picking powerhouse heavyweight wrestlers, and in particular, wrestlers who had studied jiu-jitsu.

The local favorite was Patrick Smith of Denver, billed as having a 250-0 record, and claiming to be impervious to pain, and that no wrestling hold could hurt him. He was billed as a Tae Kwon Do champion, but he was actually a mediocre boxer who had won a martial arts tournament.

Royce Gracie, who had never won anything of substance in Brazil, was billed as the world light heavyweight champion in jiu-jitsu. At 176 pounds, he was the smallest man in the tournament, by design, since the idea was to show that technique was more important than size in fighting, and that a skinny man who looked like he could easily be broken in two by these heavyweights could subdue them all.

UFC women’s bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey is probably the greatest female fighter on the planet, which is a tremendous feat. So why are we seemingly so obsessed with arguing about whether she could beat up men?